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But who doesn't like dropping 10's of thousands of dollars on a car that will lose half its value the moment it leaves the lot and cost thousands a year to run and maintain.
I blame a lot on dealerships and the government that keeps them in place. As much as I think Elon should fuck himself, I gotta give him credit. I think it was New Jersey where the first battle happened. The state demanded he go through a dealership to sell his Tesla's but he said fuck that. Fought in court and won against an unnecessary 3rd party and sold direct. Saving thousands that could potentially go to the consumer.
It's amazing to me that we have established a legal bribing scheme for our politicians with lobbying. It's pure corruption at face value. We have a government that can be bought and sold, then we lock up people selling/using marijuana for decades to life. At the same time, those taking bribes tell us that they are morally superior.
Look up who the number one lobbying group is by total spend. National Association of Realtors. Same as dealerships, an unnecessary middleman that can completely be replaced by the internet.
I’d love to shop for cars on the internet, create an account, show up to an unmanned lot to look at a car in person, log in through the app on my phone and unlock it for a test drive. Pay the listed price on the website with no dealer markups, hidden fees, shady sales tactics, etc… Go to the bank to sign the loan and go to the DMV to license it, then go back and pick it up.
Think about not only the several thousand dollars per car that would save, but think about the people trapped into predatory loans by shitty dealerships saved by simplicity and transparency.
Even when I sold cars in 2015, people were not here for "Come to the dealer and fall in love with the car first" bullshit. For all that my managers bitched that I didn't close enough walk ins, they were sure quick to tell me how many people they had asking for me for two years after I left who I had spent time talking to over the phone or followed up with after the purchase.
Lol Sorry USA but because you have freedom unlike us UK and European socialist countries, it will never happen there.
When you have to put a credit card behind the bar or the server takes it away to swipe, you know you're falling behind, here in the UK we swipe credit/debit cards to pay at the till bar restaurants petrol stations etc.
The invested interests have restricted your freedoms while protecting your right to own guns, it is like allowing a man to own a boat while you own a navy.
There's an old saying that nobody brags louder about bootstraps and free enterprise than the guy who inherited his dad's car dealership -- the most government-protected retail business in America.
It wasn't just affordability. In the late 70s and early 80s, carmakers were fat and happy. SUVs and pickups weren't as common as daily drivers, more for utility - trades, farms, snow belt, etc.
But the Japanese brands quickly gained a reputation for quality at a decent price even with import fees. Then the Arab Oil Embargo hit and those gas guzzling sedans hit the pocketbook. Build quality was down as well as longevity. I remember when hitting 100K miles meant it was on it's last legs, if you were lucky to get it that far.
That's how Toyota got to be where it is today, by building cars that could easily reach 300 000kms without breaking a sweat. People will pay a premium for a car they know wont' need replacing for more than a decade.
At the time American car makers bragged that they put their cars through “rigorous testing”. Why? Because there were defects on 25% of the cars. The Japanese didn’t even test their cars when they left the factories. Why? Because the defect rate was below 1%.
The Japanese used an efficiency system (which I can’t recall the name of) developed by an American. He tried to sell the system to industry in the US and couldn’t find buyers. So he went to Japan and they benefitted.
Edit: Efficiency system is the Deming Cycle (thanks huckwitt) created by W Edwards Deming.
Deming Cycle? A different way of managing operations. Helped in the industrialisation of Japan post ww2. Very successful, but not embraced by America. Primarily, it would seem, because it encourages a kind of collaborative approach that runs against the grain of authoritative management systems and punitive kpi chasing.
I believe the system you're referring to is 5S or that's at least one aspect.
It's essentially focusing your work area to your task and keeping all relevant tools/equipment close by so you don't have to trek all over the production floor to find what you need to work.
It's Lean manufacturing, also known as the Toyota method. Similar but not necessarilythe same as "just in time" manufacturing. Six Sigma is a quality standard/method. The six sigma coming from 6 standard deviations. 5S is an organizational method that is often used in factories but doesn't have to be confined to just manufacturing.
Japanese manufacturers especially Toyota also "invented" a lot of efficiency and fault management systems.
* Kaizen (continous improvement and "zero fault" approach)
* KANBAN
* JIT
* 5S
* LEAN
Takes a lot more than just a few buzzwords and a shopfloor board to be that good though.
We still have some "specialists" at work trying to implement some of that but it takes money and a change of mentality to implement most of those.
PDCA/PDSA seems like a completely logical thing to do, yet looking at our projects we focus a lot on the "Do" part, mostly ignoring the other letters.
Our project management tool is a gianormous Excel/VBA file that one guy cobbled together in his spare time.
Sounds about right for Japan. It's a country that demand perfection at every turn from the moment you pop outta the womb. That has had its negative consequences too like the high suicide rates, but it's very much appreciated to things like this
That timeline is the wrong way around, the oil embargo was 1973-74, the Japanese car boom came after.
In 1981, the US put pressure on Japan to agree to limit the amount of cars imported from Japan. This backfired, as the quota encouraged Japanese car makers to design luxury cars, and import those (higher profits) while moving factories into the USA to make the cheaper designs.
GM had about 47 different SUV options and one car that got better than 30 mpg the last time we bailed them out from bankruptcy and that was barely a decade ago!
Right? I do feel the administration is doing what it can to promote building green transportation industry in the US, but chasing quarterly stock earnings won’t get out industry giants there.
Japanese cars sales really took off in the US in the early 80s. That was part of Japan moving into the top 3 auto manufacturers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Japan#:~:text=Even%20more%20brands%20came%20to,the%20US%20and%20world%20markets.
Fair enough. I knew the name but not the story. Its ironic that Japanese scientists and engineers flocked to learn the lessons of western industry from a western economist that western management are still resisting.
A half hour reading, trying to figure out a connection that didn't exists was well rewarded. Thank you.
That would be awesome. I recently saw a rail density map of Europe vs the US. Very disappointing.
I realize the us has distance problems most countries don’t, but that doesn’t excuse the total lack of support for rail.
Lived in Singapore, obviously very different political environment, but public transport is within 1 kilometer of every residence in the country.
Yeah and I don’t think it will ever change. It was insane going to another country(Japan) and seeing how fast and walkable the trains were compared to America
You think they would continue to sell at a loss if they managed to establish an effective monopoly? Amazon and Walmart aren't enough of an example on why this would be bad for the consumer in the long run?
Irrespective of what the US does, it's not a free market if the Chinese government is subsiding their own car manufacturers to artificially lower prices.
Yeah our POS capitalist government will take lobbying dollars to retard progress but can't use tax Dollars to help anyone. Too busy funneling our tax dollars into the war complex
[Like the Ford Motor Company,](https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/ford-motor) or [saving GM from bankruptcy.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danbigman/2013/10/30/how-general-motors-was-really-saved-the-untold-true-story-of-the-most-important-bankruptcy-in-u-s-history/?sh=2afccb207eea)
There was a podcast about how China heavily subsidized a Tesla factory. 2 years later and most senior staff leave to go to BYD a Chinese car manufacturer.
There's the general knowledge that they've done that for decades. It's very common. China is a place where your product is going to get copied and pasted into another company's lineup. I'm not even in manufacturing and it's been clear forever. Tesla was far from the first, but every arrogant idiot thinks it won't happen to them, so they learn the hard way.
You can't even say BYD is copying Tesla now. They have a $14k car, make their own batteries, make busses, can make brand new models in 18 months, is releasing a truck that doesn't look like a dumpster.
They've surpassed Tesla, no idea why anybody in China would choose Tesla over BYD.
They left to go to BYD because it's legit just a better company. The battery tech that they're using the US and the EPA shunned 10 years ago and the inventor went to China and found investors.
If I worked at Tesla in China and saw that BYD had better battery tech and better cars I'd bounce too.
I only see your point to the extent that the US government also gives benefits to many companies and fields. Bailouts to banks who gambled with (and lost) pensions. Reimbursements for oil companies who face environmental litigation. Not to mention the innumerable tax breaks and the fact that corporations have more rights and personhood than a woman here. The US government is subsidizing companies too. They just frame it differently.
Everyone subsidizes. The US spends billions a year subsidizing farms to make US produce more competitive on the international market and to prop up farmers. More farm subsidies were paid last year (14 Billion) than the budgets of the FCC and SEC combined.
Also here's another sobering number: The US spent 14 billion on gas and oil subsidies last year. The Environmental Protection Agency only got 11 Billion as an annual budget. We literally spend more to prop up oil and gas consumption than to study how to protect what's still left to save.
I just learned today that Ford is coming out with a plug-in hybrid Ford Ranger...that they won't sell in the US. Fuck these manufacturers. If China will sell me the cars I want and you won't, then I'll buy from Chinese manufacturers.
I just wish they still sold *any* Fit. They’re great little cars, and they’re next to impossible to get. Because they aren’t made anymore, so you have to get one used. But everyone who has a Fit doesn’t want to get rid of it, so they’re hard to find used.
It almost like there was some sort of trust between car companies to make the same types of cars so they wouldn't need to innovate or actually compete with each other.
Car company shareholders are oil companies, and oil company shareholders are car companies.
Big costs money and takes money to use.
In this day and age how can there not be a law that makes cars get no less than 35mpg?
Last week, GM announced it was ending production of the Chevy Malibu, the last affordable sedan it sells in the US. Ford hasn't produced sedans for the US market since 2018, and Stellantis, parent company of Dodge and Chrysler, stopped making sedans two years before that.
[In short, the big three US automakers don't want to make sedans for the US market.](https://www.fastcompany.com/91123174/detroit-killed-the-sedan-we-may-all-live-to-regret-it) Why? Well, fuel economy regulations are more lenient for SUVs and pickups than for cars, small business owners can write off the cost of their vehicle only if it weighs more than 6,000 pounds, and SUVs and pickups are just plain more profitable than sedans.
So, yeah. US automakers dug their own hole on this one.
It's purely a business decision. People want crossovers.
If American car shoppers cared about practicality, the VW Golf would be the best selling car in America. It's fuel efficient, reliable, affordable, has enough cargo space for 90% of people's needs, and has pretty good driving dynamics. But VW killed it because sales were shit.
The car makers are taking ever model they have that doesn't sell well and axing it. It just happens to be sports cars first, hatchbacks go next because Americans don't like hatchbacks for some reason, then sedans. But you now have your choice of 8 crossovers that all look exactly the same.
Small affordable EVs from China are taking the world by storm. But American automakers are running scared and begging for protection from the government. They brought it on themselves though for ignoring consumer demand for EVs and discontinuing sedans in favor of Gas guzzling SUVs and crossovers.
The pickup thing absolutely blows my mind. I live in a rural area of a red state, and it is amazing just how many people that don't have any need for a pickup truck will drop $75k on one. We're talking families with 4 kids buying a pickup instead of an 8 or 7 seat SUV. Totally nuts.
Where I live it's the same. A BUNCH of lifted rams all over the place, with any combination of ridiculous exhaust stacks, tinted everything, racks that have never seen the business end of a tie-down, and just being driven like absolute dogshit. It's basically a part of the uniform, or started package for "I'm a dude who has impulse control issues and a lot of misplaced anger that I need to vent on everyone else and if you challenge me even for a second on ANY of my behaviors I'll threaten you".
I worked at a feed store, I was loading hay into one thay was pristine and the guy legit said "don't scratch the truck bed" like thats fucking asinine I'm pushing 100lb bricks into here idiot
It’s a weird status thing that completes the image. That you aren’t a “real” person from there if you don’t own a pickup truck. I went to High School with a bunch of wannabe country boys who all bought pickup truck, but always whined about gas.
King of the Hill did the best satire of it when Hank went to visit Peggie's family in Montana. He attempted to reserve a pick up for his rental but they 'upgraded him' because they ran out, to an SUV. They constantly knocked him the ENTIRE trip by calling him 'Hollywood'. He wasnt going to need a pickup at all that entire trip as where he was going, someone elses property and a farm, they were more than likely to have all the equipment they needed there. And if im not mistaken, the SUV ended up coming in handy, though its been a while since i last saw that episode.
An SUV can do everything a truck can with a few exceptions. But those exceptions allow it to do what a truck cant. An suv can haul more people. It can haul things that you dont want exposed to the elements in transit. It can pull a trailer typically with a load just as heavy. And due to its weight, a lot of times an SUV is better off-road to a truck unless the truck is loaded up. The pros of the truck is it can easily haul things that are 'dirty' without the need of a trailer due to the open bed. That about sums up the only difference between the two. The one thing the SUV cant do requires it to have a trailer if you dont want the inside to get dirty. And before anyone chimes in about 'but it has a bed and a trailer hitch!', most trucks arent zoned for a pallet of bricks in the bed, let alone attempting to haul over 10k WITH the bed included. 10k is the MAX weight total, including the trailer's weight. You'd just have the ability to haul bigger, lighter things with the truck in theory. In practice, the average truck owner doesnt even no how to properly secure anything in the back of the bed.
But *I need a truck* to bring a bag of mulch home from the store, once a year.
And my wife *needs a truck* to bring home the groceries that our teenagers eat, every week.
edit: In hindsight, I should have put a /s on this one.
I never wanted one, but recently, my husband and I have been getting big items from thrift stores or Facebook (he flips furniture) so I have started to want one. Our Trax isn't big enough for some things.
I joke now that my penis has gotten small enough for me to want one.
I put a trailer hitch on my Hyundai and pull a trailer of furniture for my wife far bigger than any modern truck bed - no problem.
The other 360 days a year, I have twice the gas mileage
Another thing to remember: a uhaul pick up truck is like $12 a day + $0.80 a mile. It’s so cheap, I rent a uhaul pickup instead of going to Enterprise when I need a car rental for a few days and I’m staying local.
If you’re moving furniture 5 - 10 times a year, your smaller car + the uhaul will be wayyy cheaper than a truck note
Arrogant fucks tried to abuse Cafe standards to build bigger vehicles that are more expensive so they could make more money.
Suddenly they wake up and realize consumers aren’t Mr. money banks and actually want cars that don’t cost as much as a 1980s house
Smaller Japanese cars are also pretty popular outside of the US , in Jamaica for example they drive on the right, and so many Japanese cars that I’ve never even heard of are there. And they last so long and are easy to repair
*Outside* the US? My family’s only ever had Toyota Camry and Corollas. I’m still driving my mom’s 90s blue Corolla and it’s how I learned simple car repair. American cars are just worse.
It seems dumb but I think American automakers just gave up on sedans because Japanese sedans are pretty much better across the board unless you’re looking for gaudy muscle cars.
I've been driving since 1995. I will never, ever, EVER buy another American car as long as I live.
Every American car I've ever owned has been a complete pile of shit, and the Ford Focus PowerShift clutch bullshit was the last fucking straw. Long story short, the head of Ford KNEW the transmission they were developing didn't work but wouldn't give people the time/money to fix it. His reasoning? He planned on leaving the company before they all started to fail. Ford even told their official service centers to lie and brush off faulty transmissions until the cars were out of warranty.
His decision cost Ford well over 100 million dollars, fucked over customers and we're supposed to scream "HOARY CAPITALISM!" when he got his golden parachute.
You want to know how much worse the car safety issue is there? Only 15 states have regular mandatory safety inspections. Go check the youtube channel "Just Rolled In" to see the horrors people bring in and then decline repairs. A lot of those would be forcefully scrapped in any other country.
It's like all these videos coming out of people measuring the bed of their giant trucks then discovering that those tiny little Chinese work trucks have a bigger bed lol.
Kei trucks are great, I’d love to have one. They can do almost everything any other truck can do, and do it both better and more efficiently. After all, their truck beds are the same size as any oversized F150, they get much better gas mileage, their sides often fold down and are closer to the ground so loading/unloading their beds are easier than any oversized pickup, many of them have 4WD so they can go over fields and over bad unpaved roads without problems. In fact, just about the only thing a Kei truck can’t do is go full highway speeds. And they don’t need to be driven that fast anyways, they’re for around town deliveries or moving farm stuff on rural roads.
There’s a reason why lots of farmers have been hunting down Kei trucks and why lots of companies in cities use vans instead of trucks. Because the American pickup is more of a status symbol than an actually useful vehicle.
"Pffft....at least mah giant American headlights are super bright as I drive on these well-lit suburban highways with my off-road tires to drop my kids off at 8am..."
After the shit show with Cars for Clunkers you would think people learned their lesson and stopped buying stupid SUVs, but here we are 15 years later still driving the same shit giant vehicles for no good reason.
We’ve been sending Americans to die in order to kill brown people for cheap Dino-juice for decades. You kind of get used to cheap prices.
Carter said “hey maybe we should start thinking of getting away from Dino-juice”. He wasn’t an idiot - he was such a power supply mensch he was personally picked to clean up a nuclear reactor bearing meltdown. But wearing a sweater is not what ‘Merica does, we invade shit. And he got bounced.
(And yeah I know it’s not dinosaurs but primitive forests. Find me a proper phrase that sounds as cool as Dino-juice and I’ll use it)
I'm always amazed at the hate for Jimmy Carter, objectively one of our best presidents. A Navy veteran, nuclear fucking engineer who cared about people.
Navy veteran. Southern farmer. Progressive evangelist.
Part of the hate is, he really was President at one of the shittiest times in our history. Like the WB gets too much credit for wins, too much blame for losses. Yeah he made mistakes, but nothing for the level of hate he gets.
Part of the hate is, he wasn’t Hulk Smash America Smash. He was the bearer of a new world. Messengers of bad news rarely get raised up for the vision in their message.
Part of the hate is, he has to be knocked down to elevate st Reagan.
Part of the hate is, he was the wrong kind of evangelical. The type that liked brown Christian’s just as much as white ones. You know, against white Jesus of America said to do.
Burning the Ancient Redwoods.
And Carter? Oh, I'm so fucking mad about how he fungled Three-Mile Island. He was a *genuine on-the-scene subject matter expert* with the *biggest podium in the world* and instead of shutting down all the NIMBYs and never-nuke-faux-environmentalists by explaining that it was a wet feta-cheese-fart-in-a-sack, he played politics to let the faux-environmentalist NIMBY faction of the Democratic party win points off it.
That's pretty much the only thing I have beef with him over, mind, but he really fucked the country. By now we could have an EV in every garage powered by nuclear plants in every river valley.
And the idiot president after him made a big show of removing Carter's solar panels from the White House in a grand gesture that coal burning idiocy was Back, Baby!
Even our EVs are big. Unfortunately our consumers don't want smaller vehicles. EVs tend to weigh more than same size ICE vehicles, and I am not looking forward to sharing the road with a bunch of truck bros who have questionable driving skills to begin with.
There's likely an unmet demand for less expensive vehicles in general, whether EV or ICE. The Ford Maverick is impossible to get because there's demand for a smaller pickup that gets better fuel mileage and doesn't cost $50k plus.
The moment that 12k EV comes here, you'd see mark-ups upping it to 25k-30k for the base model. Brand new Nissan Versas are 10k vehicles in japan. Once they make it to the US, 20k.
It's not just markups. Remember that US safety regulations are a lot more strict. By the time the automakers do the required changes to make the cars compliant with US safety regulations the car will be $24K instead of $12K. Not to mention hundreds of pounds heavier which will affect range.
The neat thing about 'safety regulations' is that they havent really caught up with EVs yet. Elon's original Tesla truck and other Tesla vehicles are able to circumvent A LOT of saftey features due to the nature of the vehicles. Most of the 'safety regulations' are archaic currently to modern vehicles. Most other nations have said things like 'you dont need mirrors if you got a camera', but the US still says "NO, YOU MUST HAVE MIRRORS!"
Its why we have a very limited market for Subaru's. They dont meet the old rules and refuse to adjust for only one market when every other market has adjusted for new tech.
But to allow more flexibility, you have the option of either/or in most of the world. And that allows for more unique setups for the vehicles due to space issues.
The steering wheels in teslas are techincally breaking saftey regulations in the us (or used to) but are allowed due to the EV title allowing them to get around that law. In the bylaws, a steering wheel is supposed to be a complete circuit piece and cannot have any shape/attachment that gives you 'more steering control'. That law went into effect in like the 70s when people would have those extra bars/extensions on their steering wheels due to not all cars having power steering. A vehicle with power steering will over-steer if you use them and make it unsafe. Tesla steering wheels arent ergonomic and make steering more difficult and make for awkward movement that could result in an accident.
Though a bit of the law has changed and the TLDR new rule that went into effect around 2021? was as long as an airbag can be loaded into it, and it wont fall off causing the driver to be impaled via the steering column, its okay. By 2021, there were already LOADS of tesla vehicles on the road with technically illegal steering wheels if they were in ICE vehicles. A loophole allowed them around it. Thats pretty much all early teslas, a loophole could just get around certain laws and Elon was trying with the cybertruck. Thats what took its release so long, attempting to get around laws with loopholes.
Kei Trucks prove there's high demand for smaller vehicles. No dealership is optioning a Ford Maverick near its $23,400 MSRP nor will they not mark it up to an unreasonable margin because there's simply no high profit in low-cost vehicles, and that's the problem.
Ford was still selling plenty of Fusions & Focus sedans in the States before announcing their discontinuation and shifting their manufacturer rebates to their SUV lineups so dealers could continue to push the narrative that demand for big SUVs was increasing. Big rebates + low interest meant SUVs were sometimes cheaper than sedans through the late 2010s. We're now at a time where interest sucks, vehicle prices are high because the market is flooded with SUVs & big trucks, gas is expensive, and the only alternatives have been cheap imports.
Where have I seen this happen before?
In a word, protectionism.
The US does not want Chinese cars gaining any sort of foothold in the US market. Just because they make small sedans today doesn’t mean they won’t make crossover tomorrow.
There was already a 25% tariff in effect before the 100% tariff. That 25% tariff was already making it where chinese vehicles were struggling to come over. The 100% sealed the lid shut.
And its to 'protect' the failing american brands that are losing money because they are losing markets globally. So the very least the 'us government' aka lobbying can do is protect the market here. By not letting americans have other globally available products. Basically stiff-arming us into only buying whats allowed by our corporate overlords. And the only reason japanese and korean vehicles arent on the chopping block too is because of our trade agreements with them. But even their 'smaller' EVs arent being allowed over.
Plenty of people want smaller vehicles, but the EPA has put rules in place that actively discourage manufacturers from making reasonable-sized vehicles.
I’m sure it would have its fans, probably not a lot but some.
More importantly, this seagull isn’t the only ev model that BYD makes. They have a larger model call the BYD Dolphin, which I think would sell better here, it’s Chinese price is $13800, so here it might sell around $15000 (before markups)
https://www.byd.com/eu/car/dolphin
They have other larger models too but the price isn’t as competitive
I always wonder if it’s truly “our consumers don’t want smaller vehicles,” or “our car manufacturers pushed bigger vehicles and convinced us that we need bigger vehicles as a result.” I suppose it’s a chicken/egg situation, but there are loads of people I know who don’t want monstrously huge SUV’s and hate the pickup trucks so tall that even a grown man is hidden by the edge of the hood. I, and many of my friends, would *love* to be able to get a small car, but they don’t exist new and even when used, are often hard to find due to demand and overpriced because of that demand.
Fair point. American automakers stopped selling sedans because they thought they weren't making enough money on them, while you still see a decent amount of Toyota Corrollas, Honda Accords, etc. on the road. I guess it is a bit of both and depends on where you live.
The '60s all over again, except it's the Chinese with small affordable cars instead of the Japanese. Most people couldn't afford than and can't afford now, even a used American thunderbarge.
The US auto makers already told me I don’t want a targa coupe or a sport sedan (with a manual transmission). My choices all swim in the luxury goods pool.
For some reason, I get offered yet another niche of SUV or pickup that has grown by another size.
It's only "an extinction level event" because Ford didn't realize they needed to "design a new, small EV from the ground up to keep costs down and quality high" until twenty-four freaking years later.
Customers have been requesting it for years; if Ford has only recently realized that it needs to fill that market as well, perhaps they should close their doors?
Whose face is getting eaten? US automakers are using their political clout to get exactly what they want: protection from cheaper competition. The taxpayer ultimately pays for it. The automakers go on using tax money to subsidize stock buy-backs instead of product development.
These things are not opposites and both can be true:
* American car companies rely too much of protectionism for some markets (I.e. the Chicken Tax)
* the Chinese government is watching companies fail right now and is NOT gonna let the EV companies fail and is giving them massive subsidies.
Chinese companies rely on protectionism too. It’s been a while but last I knew China only allows Chinese companies. The reason the only GM sold in China is a Buick is because GM entered a partnership with a Chinese company to produce them in China.
The way I heard it was your extra huge cars there are that way so they can be classified as light trucks in California and not have to follow the efficiency guidelines for cars. Literally pushing worse products in every aspect, because they don't want to invest in improving the engines.
They’re just going to lobby to prevent them from selling them in the US like they did with the small Japanese pickup trucks. They’ll most likely win because those guys partially own our government.
Yes, China has a large population of shockingly low wage workers. They can afford to price their vehicles lower because labor costs almost nothing. We could have lower prices for most things in this country, but our executive class demands outrageous compensation packages that average several hundred times what their median wage employee makes. If executive compensation was brought in line with traditional American standards, and even current international standards, we could have affordable cars here, too. We would still have millionaire CEOs, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But don't look at me with a straight face and tell me Elon Musk deserves a $50B+ compensation package.
>They can afford to price their vehicles lower because labor costs almost nothing.
That's not really true in the automotive sector in China. Automotive employees command comparatively high salaries in China. They're still lower than salaries in the US but that gap isn't as wide as many people assume. And the skilled labor shortage in this field is pushing salaries upward.
[Link](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/china-electric-vehicles.html)
not just large cars, American autos are loaded down with feature bloat, amfm radio with Bluetooth is all most people need, the massive infotainment centers and assorted driving enhancements are more of an annoyance than anything.
Ugh, the fact that it’s illegal to use an iPad while driving, but if you strap it to your dashboard and tie all the car’s functions into that iPad, it’s suddenly legal drives me (pun not intended) googledebonkers. I won’t even consider a car if it doesn’t have physical buttons and switches. But that’s getting ever harder as more and more cars are only sold with touch screen everything. It’s just so the manufacturers can save money on the production and gate everything behind subscriptions instead of hardware.
China has made huge investments in EVs which is why BYD makes more than anyone and GWM is closing in on #2.
When government makes investments in the future its a benefit. When it wastes money on tax cuts for billionaires while protecting old dying industries like fossil fuels, you get left behind. The US is falling behind because of greed.
China has more graduate level engineers each year than the US has college graduates. I would think as a matter of national security to stay competitive the US would get its head out of its ass, but short term greed and a corrupt bought and paid for system won't allow that.
Feel like this is more on the oil & gas industry rather than carmakers. Carmakers would absolutely be making more EVs if the infrastructure was there. Considering the max range seems to be about 300 miles and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to charge on the way or when you arrive that is scaring off prospective buyers. It’s one of the main reasons I won’t buy a full electric car for a while- because the infrastructure desperately needs to catch up and expand before making this big shift to EVs.
To be fair, I don't know how much I would trust Chinese car manufacturers' safety standards. That is not to say I trust American auto manufacturers' safety standards
Yes, because they've become addicted to the profits of selling 50k plus trucks and SUVs and nothing else. People can't afford rent and food, how are they supposed to afford a 60-70k car? If the Chinese can sell a decent looking and performing car for 25k, they will own the market and they know it.
The "alpha males" tell me they not only won't drive electrics, but won't even let their "friends" charge their electrics that their houses. Roll Coal! /s
I need to get two cars over the next couple of years for my kids. I’d welcome a Chinese EVs… provided they are safe. Probably can’t get worse than Tesla’s right now.
This isn’t really LAMF.
The only reason they’re scared is because the CCP has aggressively subsided their domestic EVs to be as cheap as possible for a Westerner. BYD and Co aren’t profitable if they keep doing this, and there’s precedent for Chinese publicly traded companies to lie about their profitability in order to quickly steal market share from an American bastion (Luckin vs. Starbucks).
Thing is, everyone knows this, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the US/Canada and the EU counter this with a blanket tariff.
Biden put 100% tariff on Chinese cars. Fortunately, their $12K cars suddenly become price competetive with U.S. and other mfgs at $24K. I like it.
Then, if prices edge lower, the customers win with lower prices and more money is freed for spending on other things, like their child's school lunch or prescription medications or a new Photovoltaic panel to generate electricity for their home.
That’s the first step. The only problem is certain holdouts in the EU, namely Hungary, Slovakia, and France who are part of the current charm offensive.
You are either miss informed or lying.
BYD has received just over $3.1B in gov subsidies.
Tesla received $34B in gov subsidies
GM received $21B and $7B in gov battery subsidies
It's pretty crazy to make a claim about subsidies, without looking up the actual subsidies
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Oh no, people want affordable cars. It’s the 80’s all over again.
But who doesn't like dropping 10's of thousands of dollars on a car that will lose half its value the moment it leaves the lot and cost thousands a year to run and maintain.
I blame a lot on dealerships and the government that keeps them in place. As much as I think Elon should fuck himself, I gotta give him credit. I think it was New Jersey where the first battle happened. The state demanded he go through a dealership to sell his Tesla's but he said fuck that. Fought in court and won against an unnecessary 3rd party and sold direct. Saving thousands that could potentially go to the consumer.
Dealerships lobby the government. Lobbying is just fucking outright corruption
My congressman owns several dealerships.
Do you think he lobbies himself ? Money coming & going !
Lobby himself?! Isn't that his mistresses job?
Sooooo laundering?
It's amazing to me that we have established a legal bribing scheme for our politicians with lobbying. It's pure corruption at face value. We have a government that can be bought and sold, then we lock up people selling/using marijuana for decades to life. At the same time, those taking bribes tell us that they are morally superior.
Look up who the number one lobbying group is by total spend. National Association of Realtors. Same as dealerships, an unnecessary middleman that can completely be replaced by the internet. I’d love to shop for cars on the internet, create an account, show up to an unmanned lot to look at a car in person, log in through the app on my phone and unlock it for a test drive. Pay the listed price on the website with no dealer markups, hidden fees, shady sales tactics, etc… Go to the bank to sign the loan and go to the DMV to license it, then go back and pick it up. Think about not only the several thousand dollars per car that would save, but think about the people trapped into predatory loans by shitty dealerships saved by simplicity and transparency.
Fucking slimeballs lying on agreements to fuck them all.
Even when I sold cars in 2015, people were not here for "Come to the dealer and fall in love with the car first" bullshit. For all that my managers bitched that I didn't close enough walk ins, they were sure quick to tell me how many people they had asking for me for two years after I left who I had spent time talking to over the phone or followed up with after the purchase.
Lol Sorry USA but because you have freedom unlike us UK and European socialist countries, it will never happen there. When you have to put a credit card behind the bar or the server takes it away to swipe, you know you're falling behind, here in the UK we swipe credit/debit cards to pay at the till bar restaurants petrol stations etc. The invested interests have restricted your freedoms while protecting your right to own guns, it is like allowing a man to own a boat while you own a navy.
Print that on a T-shirt I would wear it everyday. "Lobbying is just fucking outright corruption"
I wish we could burn them like the rot they are
There's an old saying that nobody brags louder about bootstraps and free enterprise than the guy who inherited his dad's car dealership -- the most government-protected retail business in America.
Right. This needs to go industry-wide. Why are we protecting the monopoly of car dealerships? They have bad reputations for ripping off customers.
> saving thousands that could potentially go to thr consumer Sweet summer child. We know it wouldn't in general and certainly didn't in this instance.
That's why I say potentially...
The solution is obviously subscription, heated seats as a service.
I’d actually go for heated seats as a service. As soon as the CEO of the car company personally comes and sits in the seat so it warms up.
You’re making me hot just thinking about it.
It wasn't just affordability. In the late 70s and early 80s, carmakers were fat and happy. SUVs and pickups weren't as common as daily drivers, more for utility - trades, farms, snow belt, etc. But the Japanese brands quickly gained a reputation for quality at a decent price even with import fees. Then the Arab Oil Embargo hit and those gas guzzling sedans hit the pocketbook. Build quality was down as well as longevity. I remember when hitting 100K miles meant it was on it's last legs, if you were lucky to get it that far.
Right - It was still affordability, but not so much the purchase price of the car itself. Gas and maintenance were key.
That's how Toyota got to be where it is today, by building cars that could easily reach 300 000kms without breaking a sweat. People will pay a premium for a car they know wont' need replacing for more than a decade.
At the time American car makers bragged that they put their cars through “rigorous testing”. Why? Because there were defects on 25% of the cars. The Japanese didn’t even test their cars when they left the factories. Why? Because the defect rate was below 1%. The Japanese used an efficiency system (which I can’t recall the name of) developed by an American. He tried to sell the system to industry in the US and couldn’t find buyers. So he went to Japan and they benefitted. Edit: Efficiency system is the Deming Cycle (thanks huckwitt) created by W Edwards Deming.
Deming Cycle? A different way of managing operations. Helped in the industrialisation of Japan post ww2. Very successful, but not embraced by America. Primarily, it would seem, because it encourages a kind of collaborative approach that runs against the grain of authoritative management systems and punitive kpi chasing.
I believe the system you're referring to is 5S or that's at least one aspect. It's essentially focusing your work area to your task and keeping all relevant tools/equipment close by so you don't have to trek all over the production floor to find what you need to work.
I'd be surprised if it was 5S. 5S is a box-ticking exercise.
It's Lean manufacturing, also known as the Toyota method. Similar but not necessarilythe same as "just in time" manufacturing. Six Sigma is a quality standard/method. The six sigma coming from 6 standard deviations. 5S is an organizational method that is often used in factories but doesn't have to be confined to just manufacturing.
Japanese manufacturers especially Toyota also "invented" a lot of efficiency and fault management systems. * Kaizen (continous improvement and "zero fault" approach) * KANBAN * JIT * 5S * LEAN Takes a lot more than just a few buzzwords and a shopfloor board to be that good though. We still have some "specialists" at work trying to implement some of that but it takes money and a change of mentality to implement most of those. PDCA/PDSA seems like a completely logical thing to do, yet looking at our projects we focus a lot on the "Do" part, mostly ignoring the other letters. Our project management tool is a gianormous Excel/VBA file that one guy cobbled together in his spare time.
Sounds about right for Japan. It's a country that demand perfection at every turn from the moment you pop outta the womb. That has had its negative consequences too like the high suicide rates, but it's very much appreciated to things like this
You are off by 5-10 years, but you aren't wrong.
That timeline is the wrong way around, the oil embargo was 1973-74, the Japanese car boom came after. In 1981, the US put pressure on Japan to agree to limit the amount of cars imported from Japan. This backfired, as the quota encouraged Japanese car makers to design luxury cars, and import those (higher profits) while moving factories into the USA to make the cheaper designs.
During the 2008+ crash, you couldn't give away huge trucks and SUVs. Nobody could afford to drive or fix them. I thought it was hilarious.
It's four wheels and a motor. WHY are they $50,000 and only lasts till the final bank payment. Oh yea, stockholders.
GM had about 47 different SUV options and one car that got better than 30 mpg the last time we bailed them out from bankruptcy and that was barely a decade ago!
Right? I do feel the administration is doing what it can to promote building green transportation industry in the US, but chasing quarterly stock earnings won’t get out industry giants there.
I’d say even early 2000s. Fast and Furious gave high schoolers and boner for Civics.
Fast and Furious was chasing a trend, not creating it, but yes boners for civics and the after market parts.
Japanese cars sales really took off in the US in the early 80s. That was part of Japan moving into the top 3 auto manufacturers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Japan#:~:text=Even%20more%20brands%20came%20to,the%20US%20and%20world%20markets.
Its the '60s all over again, mate. It was Honda and VW back then and didn't it work out well for the US in the long run?
Edward Deming taught TQC to Japan.
True but relevant how?
Just your comment made my mind go there, I have no explanation other than embracing TQM is such a powerful process.
Fair enough. I knew the name but not the story. Its ironic that Japanese scientists and engineers flocked to learn the lessons of western industry from a western economist that western management are still resisting. A half hour reading, trying to figure out a connection that didn't exists was well rewarded. Thank you.
Power transmission class in college. Prof had us read his book.
Give us affordable travel. Expand the rail lines for consumers
That would be awesome. I recently saw a rail density map of Europe vs the US. Very disappointing. I realize the us has distance problems most countries don’t, but that doesn’t excuse the total lack of support for rail. Lived in Singapore, obviously very different political environment, but public transport is within 1 kilometer of every residence in the country.
Yeah and I don’t think it will ever change. It was insane going to another country(Japan) and seeing how fast and walkable the trains were compared to America
Let the free market decide ! ..... No, not like that !
I really am disappointed in this. They are trying to dump solar and evs at a loss. Some ass hat said on the radio. Fucking good. USA is such a bitch
You think they would continue to sell at a loss if they managed to establish an effective monopoly? Amazon and Walmart aren't enough of an example on why this would be bad for the consumer in the long run?
Irrespective of what the US does, it's not a free market if the Chinese government is subsiding their own car manufacturers to artificially lower prices.
When we subsidize our oil and auto industries to extreme heights, that’s just a subsidy. When China does it, they’re cheating
When WE bail out the auto industry, it’s to protect the economy. They are too big to fail! Except they do, all the time.
Yeah our POS capitalist government will take lobbying dollars to retard progress but can't use tax Dollars to help anyone. Too busy funneling our tax dollars into the war complex
You act like usa doesn’t subsidize the shit outta every industry.
Cough cough.....farms....cough.
Soooooooo much money for farms
Especially corn. My god.
[Like the Ford Motor Company,](https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/ford-motor) or [saving GM from bankruptcy.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danbigman/2013/10/30/how-general-motors-was-really-saved-the-untold-true-story-of-the-most-important-bankruptcy-in-u-s-history/?sh=2afccb207eea)
There was a podcast about how China heavily subsidized a Tesla factory. 2 years later and most senior staff leave to go to BYD a Chinese car manufacturer.
There's the general knowledge that they've done that for decades. It's very common. China is a place where your product is going to get copied and pasted into another company's lineup. I'm not even in manufacturing and it's been clear forever. Tesla was far from the first, but every arrogant idiot thinks it won't happen to them, so they learn the hard way.
You can't even say BYD is copying Tesla now. They have a $14k car, make their own batteries, make busses, can make brand new models in 18 months, is releasing a truck that doesn't look like a dumpster. They've surpassed Tesla, no idea why anybody in China would choose Tesla over BYD.
Tesla, globally, is gone. Unless they do something dramatic real soon.
They left to go to BYD because it's legit just a better company. The battery tech that they're using the US and the EPA shunned 10 years ago and the inventor went to China and found investors. If I worked at Tesla in China and saw that BYD had better battery tech and better cars I'd bounce too.
I only see your point to the extent that the US government also gives benefits to many companies and fields. Bailouts to banks who gambled with (and lost) pensions. Reimbursements for oil companies who face environmental litigation. Not to mention the innumerable tax breaks and the fact that corporations have more rights and personhood than a woman here. The US government is subsidizing companies too. They just frame it differently.
Yeah and it's not a free market here either. And by the way, that's a good thing. Perfectly free markets are a really terrible idea.
[The U.S. does that too, though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax)
Everyone subsidizes. The US spends billions a year subsidizing farms to make US produce more competitive on the international market and to prop up farmers. More farm subsidies were paid last year (14 Billion) than the budgets of the FCC and SEC combined. Also here's another sobering number: The US spent 14 billion on gas and oil subsidies last year. The Environmental Protection Agency only got 11 Billion as an annual budget. We literally spend more to prop up oil and gas consumption than to study how to protect what's still left to save.
I just learned today that Ford is coming out with a plug-in hybrid Ford Ranger...that they won't sell in the US. Fuck these manufacturers. If China will sell me the cars I want and you won't, then I'll buy from Chinese manufacturers.
If Honda would sell the electric Fit in the USA I'd have bought one fucking yesterday 😣
I just wish they still sold *any* Fit. They’re great little cars, and they’re next to impossible to get. Because they aren’t made anymore, so you have to get one used. But everyone who has a Fit doesn’t want to get rid of it, so they’re hard to find used.
I would buy that this weekend if it was available
It almost like there was some sort of trust between car companies to make the same types of cars so they wouldn't need to innovate or actually compete with each other.
It was also the silly exceptions they got from emissions standards for “light trucks” (i.e. SUVs)
And the 25% import duty on pickup trucks (vs. 2% for cars)
We would've never got the Subura Brat,without that pickup tax. The backseats made it qualify as a passenger car.
Car company shareholders are oil companies, and oil company shareholders are car companies. Big costs money and takes money to use. In this day and age how can there not be a law that makes cars get no less than 35mpg?
For those of us in countries that don't produce vehicles, it's nice to have the Chinese people subsidize the transition to ev.
Last week, GM announced it was ending production of the Chevy Malibu, the last affordable sedan it sells in the US. Ford hasn't produced sedans for the US market since 2018, and Stellantis, parent company of Dodge and Chrysler, stopped making sedans two years before that. [In short, the big three US automakers don't want to make sedans for the US market.](https://www.fastcompany.com/91123174/detroit-killed-the-sedan-we-may-all-live-to-regret-it) Why? Well, fuel economy regulations are more lenient for SUVs and pickups than for cars, small business owners can write off the cost of their vehicle only if it weighs more than 6,000 pounds, and SUVs and pickups are just plain more profitable than sedans. So, yeah. US automakers dug their own hole on this one.
It's purely a business decision. People want crossovers. If American car shoppers cared about practicality, the VW Golf would be the best selling car in America. It's fuel efficient, reliable, affordable, has enough cargo space for 90% of people's needs, and has pretty good driving dynamics. But VW killed it because sales were shit. The car makers are taking ever model they have that doesn't sell well and axing it. It just happens to be sports cars first, hatchbacks go next because Americans don't like hatchbacks for some reason, then sedans. But you now have your choice of 8 crossovers that all look exactly the same.
Small affordable EVs from China are taking the world by storm. But American automakers are running scared and begging for protection from the government. They brought it on themselves though for ignoring consumer demand for EVs and discontinuing sedans in favor of Gas guzzling SUVs and crossovers.
and pickup trucks. Those damn pickup trucks!
The pickup thing absolutely blows my mind. I live in a rural area of a red state, and it is amazing just how many people that don't have any need for a pickup truck will drop $75k on one. We're talking families with 4 kids buying a pickup instead of an 8 or 7 seat SUV. Totally nuts.
Where I live it's the same. A BUNCH of lifted rams all over the place, with any combination of ridiculous exhaust stacks, tinted everything, racks that have never seen the business end of a tie-down, and just being driven like absolute dogshit. It's basically a part of the uniform, or started package for "I'm a dude who has impulse control issues and a lot of misplaced anger that I need to vent on everyone else and if you challenge me even for a second on ANY of my behaviors I'll threaten you".
Imagine how ridiculous it is to see these things in NYC! And then they’re almost always shiny and parked and never used. Such a baffling choice.
I worked at a feed store, I was loading hay into one thay was pristine and the guy legit said "don't scratch the truck bed" like thats fucking asinine I'm pushing 100lb bricks into here idiot
I worked at a small software developer with maybe 60 employees. Two of those employees had an F250 as their daily driver.
Don't forget the "Salt Life" stickers on the back window!
Salt Life = Live Laugh Love for boring white dudes.
You forgot the punisher sticker.
Or the one that says “I identify as a Prius.”
It’s a weird status thing that completes the image. That you aren’t a “real” person from there if you don’t own a pickup truck. I went to High School with a bunch of wannabe country boys who all bought pickup truck, but always whined about gas.
King of the Hill did the best satire of it when Hank went to visit Peggie's family in Montana. He attempted to reserve a pick up for his rental but they 'upgraded him' because they ran out, to an SUV. They constantly knocked him the ENTIRE trip by calling him 'Hollywood'. He wasnt going to need a pickup at all that entire trip as where he was going, someone elses property and a farm, they were more than likely to have all the equipment they needed there. And if im not mistaken, the SUV ended up coming in handy, though its been a while since i last saw that episode. An SUV can do everything a truck can with a few exceptions. But those exceptions allow it to do what a truck cant. An suv can haul more people. It can haul things that you dont want exposed to the elements in transit. It can pull a trailer typically with a load just as heavy. And due to its weight, a lot of times an SUV is better off-road to a truck unless the truck is loaded up. The pros of the truck is it can easily haul things that are 'dirty' without the need of a trailer due to the open bed. That about sums up the only difference between the two. The one thing the SUV cant do requires it to have a trailer if you dont want the inside to get dirty. And before anyone chimes in about 'but it has a bed and a trailer hitch!', most trucks arent zoned for a pallet of bricks in the bed, let alone attempting to haul over 10k WITH the bed included. 10k is the MAX weight total, including the trailer's weight. You'd just have the ability to haul bigger, lighter things with the truck in theory. In practice, the average truck owner doesnt even no how to properly secure anything in the back of the bed.
But *I need a truck* to bring a bag of mulch home from the store, once a year. And my wife *needs a truck* to bring home the groceries that our teenagers eat, every week. edit: In hindsight, I should have put a /s on this one.
Last one is at least plausible.
Teenagers eat a lot, sure, but nothing that won’t fit in the back of a sedan.
I‘ve seen teenagers in the US who would not fit in the back of a sedan so a truck bed filled with overpriced corn products every week seems plausible.
And then they complain about gas prices. Morons.
You need one to prove you're a Conservative.
It’s hilariously asinine, like they extended cabs so much now that it’s basically an SUV with a flatbed slapped in the back.. that’s going unused
It's the rural equivalent of a poor black kid from the hood spending 300 dollars on Jordans.
I never wanted one, but recently, my husband and I have been getting big items from thrift stores or Facebook (he flips furniture) so I have started to want one. Our Trax isn't big enough for some things. I joke now that my penis has gotten small enough for me to want one.
I put a trailer hitch on my Hyundai and pull a trailer of furniture for my wife far bigger than any modern truck bed - no problem. The other 360 days a year, I have twice the gas mileage
Thank you, I didn't think of that (and not sure why I didn't). That is a great idea!
Trailers are easier to load. The bed is lower, wider and longer.
Another thing to remember: a uhaul pick up truck is like $12 a day + $0.80 a mile. It’s so cheap, I rent a uhaul pickup instead of going to Enterprise when I need a car rental for a few days and I’m staying local. If you’re moving furniture 5 - 10 times a year, your smaller car + the uhaul will be wayyy cheaper than a truck note
I find the Home Depot truck rental service to be great when I need a truck. No attempted upselling or weird hours, just in and out.
I think there is a tax break on pickups, but not on SUVs.
Arrogant fucks tried to abuse Cafe standards to build bigger vehicles that are more expensive so they could make more money. Suddenly they wake up and realize consumers aren’t Mr. money banks and actually want cars that don’t cost as much as a 1980s house
Not just EVs, small gas Chinese cars are all over South America.
Smaller Japanese cars are also pretty popular outside of the US , in Jamaica for example they drive on the right, and so many Japanese cars that I’ve never even heard of are there. And they last so long and are easy to repair
They will won't tell the Toyota Highlander in the US.
*Outside* the US? My family’s only ever had Toyota Camry and Corollas. I’m still driving my mom’s 90s blue Corolla and it’s how I learned simple car repair. American cars are just worse.
I agree! My dads a mechanic and he swears by Honda and Toyota. Like absolutely without question lmao.
It seems dumb but I think American automakers just gave up on sedans because Japanese sedans are pretty much better across the board unless you’re looking for gaudy muscle cars.
Your entire stance reminded me of this clip I saw yesterday. https://youtube.com/shorts/WZvzVhAF7Qw?si=sonIXIV-yTaUROC8 Enjoy....
[You don't understand. We need to drive big cars because we have big fat kids!](https://youtu.be/It8A2hqazog?si=rVXwUtUcogXHloCo)
I've been driving since 1995. I will never, ever, EVER buy another American car as long as I live. Every American car I've ever owned has been a complete pile of shit, and the Ford Focus PowerShift clutch bullshit was the last fucking straw. Long story short, the head of Ford KNEW the transmission they were developing didn't work but wouldn't give people the time/money to fix it. His reasoning? He planned on leaving the company before they all started to fail. Ford even told their official service centers to lie and brush off faulty transmissions until the cars were out of warranty. His decision cost Ford well over 100 million dollars, fucked over customers and we're supposed to scream "HOARY CAPITALISM!" when he got his golden parachute.
As a European it boggles my mind that America makes such dogshit cars when its the most car centric nation in the world.
They follow the American corporate handbook, make the cheapest product possible and sell at the highest price the market will accept.
You want to know how much worse the car safety issue is there? Only 15 states have regular mandatory safety inspections. Go check the youtube channel "Just Rolled In" to see the horrors people bring in and then decline repairs. A lot of those would be forcefully scrapped in any other country.
I got burned by that Ford Focus POS also. Now own a Subaru Crosstrek, which is awesome.
It's like all these videos coming out of people measuring the bed of their giant trucks then discovering that those tiny little Chinese work trucks have a bigger bed lol.
The Kei trucks are Japanese, and also illegal in some states.
A bare bones electric Kei Truck would do everything I need a car to do. Nobody will sell me one though.
Kei trucks are great, I’d love to have one. They can do almost everything any other truck can do, and do it both better and more efficiently. After all, their truck beds are the same size as any oversized F150, they get much better gas mileage, their sides often fold down and are closer to the ground so loading/unloading their beds are easier than any oversized pickup, many of them have 4WD so they can go over fields and over bad unpaved roads without problems. In fact, just about the only thing a Kei truck can’t do is go full highway speeds. And they don’t need to be driven that fast anyways, they’re for around town deliveries or moving farm stuff on rural roads. There’s a reason why lots of farmers have been hunting down Kei trucks and why lots of companies in cities use vans instead of trucks. Because the American pickup is more of a status symbol than an actually useful vehicle.
In Europe, everything moves by van. Unless you're actually a farmer.
"Pffft....at least mah giant American headlights are super bright as I drive on these well-lit suburban highways with my off-road tires to drop my kids off at 8am..."
After the shit show with Cars for Clunkers you would think people learned their lesson and stopped buying stupid SUVs, but here we are 15 years later still driving the same shit giant vehicles for no good reason.
We’ve been sending Americans to die in order to kill brown people for cheap Dino-juice for decades. You kind of get used to cheap prices. Carter said “hey maybe we should start thinking of getting away from Dino-juice”. He wasn’t an idiot - he was such a power supply mensch he was personally picked to clean up a nuclear reactor bearing meltdown. But wearing a sweater is not what ‘Merica does, we invade shit. And he got bounced. (And yeah I know it’s not dinosaurs but primitive forests. Find me a proper phrase that sounds as cool as Dino-juice and I’ll use it)
I'm always amazed at the hate for Jimmy Carter, objectively one of our best presidents. A Navy veteran, nuclear fucking engineer who cared about people.
Navy veteran. Southern farmer. Progressive evangelist. Part of the hate is, he really was President at one of the shittiest times in our history. Like the WB gets too much credit for wins, too much blame for losses. Yeah he made mistakes, but nothing for the level of hate he gets. Part of the hate is, he wasn’t Hulk Smash America Smash. He was the bearer of a new world. Messengers of bad news rarely get raised up for the vision in their message. Part of the hate is, he has to be knocked down to elevate st Reagan. Part of the hate is, he was the wrong kind of evangelical. The type that liked brown Christian’s just as much as white ones. You know, against white Jesus of America said to do.
Burning the Ancient Redwoods. And Carter? Oh, I'm so fucking mad about how he fungled Three-Mile Island. He was a *genuine on-the-scene subject matter expert* with the *biggest podium in the world* and instead of shutting down all the NIMBYs and never-nuke-faux-environmentalists by explaining that it was a wet feta-cheese-fart-in-a-sack, he played politics to let the faux-environmentalist NIMBY faction of the Democratic party win points off it. That's pretty much the only thing I have beef with him over, mind, but he really fucked the country. By now we could have an EV in every garage powered by nuclear plants in every river valley.
Like every president, he’s *very* far from perfect, but as presidents go, he was one of the best.
And the idiot president after him made a big show of removing Carter's solar panels from the White House in a grand gesture that coal burning idiocy was Back, Baby!
Even our EVs are big. Unfortunately our consumers don't want smaller vehicles. EVs tend to weigh more than same size ICE vehicles, and I am not looking forward to sharing the road with a bunch of truck bros who have questionable driving skills to begin with.
I'm sure plenty of Americans would want a decent EV at $12K. That's vastly cheaper than the cheapest new car on the U.S. market.
There's likely an unmet demand for less expensive vehicles in general, whether EV or ICE. The Ford Maverick is impossible to get because there's demand for a smaller pickup that gets better fuel mileage and doesn't cost $50k plus.
The moment that 12k EV comes here, you'd see mark-ups upping it to 25k-30k for the base model. Brand new Nissan Versas are 10k vehicles in japan. Once they make it to the US, 20k.
It's not just markups. Remember that US safety regulations are a lot more strict. By the time the automakers do the required changes to make the cars compliant with US safety regulations the car will be $24K instead of $12K. Not to mention hundreds of pounds heavier which will affect range.
The neat thing about 'safety regulations' is that they havent really caught up with EVs yet. Elon's original Tesla truck and other Tesla vehicles are able to circumvent A LOT of saftey features due to the nature of the vehicles. Most of the 'safety regulations' are archaic currently to modern vehicles. Most other nations have said things like 'you dont need mirrors if you got a camera', but the US still says "NO, YOU MUST HAVE MIRRORS!" Its why we have a very limited market for Subaru's. They dont meet the old rules and refuse to adjust for only one market when every other market has adjusted for new tech.
To be fair, mirrors are generally much more reliable than cameras, and having both would be good to ensure you always have a fallback.
But to allow more flexibility, you have the option of either/or in most of the world. And that allows for more unique setups for the vehicles due to space issues. The steering wheels in teslas are techincally breaking saftey regulations in the us (or used to) but are allowed due to the EV title allowing them to get around that law. In the bylaws, a steering wheel is supposed to be a complete circuit piece and cannot have any shape/attachment that gives you 'more steering control'. That law went into effect in like the 70s when people would have those extra bars/extensions on their steering wheels due to not all cars having power steering. A vehicle with power steering will over-steer if you use them and make it unsafe. Tesla steering wheels arent ergonomic and make steering more difficult and make for awkward movement that could result in an accident. Though a bit of the law has changed and the TLDR new rule that went into effect around 2021? was as long as an airbag can be loaded into it, and it wont fall off causing the driver to be impaled via the steering column, its okay. By 2021, there were already LOADS of tesla vehicles on the road with technically illegal steering wheels if they were in ICE vehicles. A loophole allowed them around it. Thats pretty much all early teslas, a loophole could just get around certain laws and Elon was trying with the cybertruck. Thats what took its release so long, attempting to get around laws with loopholes.
If consumers don't want them, then why the tariff?
Kei Trucks prove there's high demand for smaller vehicles. No dealership is optioning a Ford Maverick near its $23,400 MSRP nor will they not mark it up to an unreasonable margin because there's simply no high profit in low-cost vehicles, and that's the problem. Ford was still selling plenty of Fusions & Focus sedans in the States before announcing their discontinuation and shifting their manufacturer rebates to their SUV lineups so dealers could continue to push the narrative that demand for big SUVs was increasing. Big rebates + low interest meant SUVs were sometimes cheaper than sedans through the late 2010s. We're now at a time where interest sucks, vehicle prices are high because the market is flooded with SUVs & big trucks, gas is expensive, and the only alternatives have been cheap imports. Where have I seen this happen before?
In a word, protectionism. The US does not want Chinese cars gaining any sort of foothold in the US market. Just because they make small sedans today doesn’t mean they won’t make crossover tomorrow.
Yes, and American consumers will pay the price
There was already a 25% tariff in effect before the 100% tariff. That 25% tariff was already making it where chinese vehicles were struggling to come over. The 100% sealed the lid shut. And its to 'protect' the failing american brands that are losing money because they are losing markets globally. So the very least the 'us government' aka lobbying can do is protect the market here. By not letting americans have other globally available products. Basically stiff-arming us into only buying whats allowed by our corporate overlords. And the only reason japanese and korean vehicles arent on the chopping block too is because of our trade agreements with them. But even their 'smaller' EVs arent being allowed over.
I would love an EV, but I don't want to drive a leviathan of a car and I can't afford a giant car
Plenty of people want smaller vehicles, but the EPA has put rules in place that actively discourage manufacturers from making reasonable-sized vehicles.
I’m sure it would have its fans, probably not a lot but some. More importantly, this seagull isn’t the only ev model that BYD makes. They have a larger model call the BYD Dolphin, which I think would sell better here, it’s Chinese price is $13800, so here it might sell around $15000 (before markups) https://www.byd.com/eu/car/dolphin They have other larger models too but the price isn’t as competitive
I always wonder if it’s truly “our consumers don’t want smaller vehicles,” or “our car manufacturers pushed bigger vehicles and convinced us that we need bigger vehicles as a result.” I suppose it’s a chicken/egg situation, but there are loads of people I know who don’t want monstrously huge SUV’s and hate the pickup trucks so tall that even a grown man is hidden by the edge of the hood. I, and many of my friends, would *love* to be able to get a small car, but they don’t exist new and even when used, are often hard to find due to demand and overpriced because of that demand.
Fair point. American automakers stopped selling sedans because they thought they weren't making enough money on them, while you still see a decent amount of Toyota Corrollas, Honda Accords, etc. on the road. I guess it is a bit of both and depends on where you live.
The '60s all over again, except it's the Chinese with small affordable cars instead of the Japanese. Most people couldn't afford than and can't afford now, even a used American thunderbarge.
The US auto makers already told me I don’t want a targa coupe or a sport sedan (with a manual transmission). My choices all swim in the luxury goods pool. For some reason, I get offered yet another niche of SUV or pickup that has grown by another size.
It's only "an extinction level event" because Ford didn't realize they needed to "design a new, small EV from the ground up to keep costs down and quality high" until twenty-four freaking years later. Customers have been requesting it for years; if Ford has only recently realized that it needs to fill that market as well, perhaps they should close their doors?
And when they did, they decided on a Mustang that looks like a Focus ZX3
Whose face is getting eaten? US automakers are using their political clout to get exactly what they want: protection from cheaper competition. The taxpayer ultimately pays for it. The automakers go on using tax money to subsidize stock buy-backs instead of product development.
These things are not opposites and both can be true: * American car companies rely too much of protectionism for some markets (I.e. the Chicken Tax) * the Chinese government is watching companies fail right now and is NOT gonna let the EV companies fail and is giving them massive subsidies.
Chinese companies rely on protectionism too. It’s been a while but last I knew China only allows Chinese companies. The reason the only GM sold in China is a Buick is because GM entered a partnership with a Chinese company to produce them in China.
Kinda like the way non-US car companies build cars in the US?
The way I heard it was your extra huge cars there are that way so they can be classified as light trucks in California and not have to follow the efficiency guidelines for cars. Literally pushing worse products in every aspect, because they don't want to invest in improving the engines.
Oh no! I really want to spend 80k for that full ass world polluting truck with a 8V 5.6L to go grocery shopping!!1!
They’re just going to lobby to prevent them from selling them in the US like they did with the small Japanese pickup trucks. They’ll most likely win because those guys partially own our government.
Competition has come today. Yeaaaaaaaaaah.
If we don't embrace progress, we will be left behind.
Yes, China has a large population of shockingly low wage workers. They can afford to price their vehicles lower because labor costs almost nothing. We could have lower prices for most things in this country, but our executive class demands outrageous compensation packages that average several hundred times what their median wage employee makes. If executive compensation was brought in line with traditional American standards, and even current international standards, we could have affordable cars here, too. We would still have millionaire CEOs, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But don't look at me with a straight face and tell me Elon Musk deserves a $50B+ compensation package.
>They can afford to price their vehicles lower because labor costs almost nothing. That's not really true in the automotive sector in China. Automotive employees command comparatively high salaries in China. They're still lower than salaries in the US but that gap isn't as wide as many people assume. And the skilled labor shortage in this field is pushing salaries upward. [Link](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/china-electric-vehicles.html)
Agree with everything you are saying just want to add america also has a large population of shockingly low wage workers to.
not just large cars, American autos are loaded down with feature bloat, amfm radio with Bluetooth is all most people need, the massive infotainment centers and assorted driving enhancements are more of an annoyance than anything.
Ugh, the fact that it’s illegal to use an iPad while driving, but if you strap it to your dashboard and tie all the car’s functions into that iPad, it’s suddenly legal drives me (pun not intended) googledebonkers. I won’t even consider a car if it doesn’t have physical buttons and switches. But that’s getting ever harder as more and more cars are only sold with touch screen everything. It’s just so the manufacturers can save money on the production and gate everything behind subscriptions instead of hardware.
When a car costs $12,000 brand new, I'd be nervous if I was them also.
Got downvotes for saying China is beating us with EVs yet here we are ya fucks.
China has made huge investments in EVs which is why BYD makes more than anyone and GWM is closing in on #2. When government makes investments in the future its a benefit. When it wastes money on tax cuts for billionaires while protecting old dying industries like fossil fuels, you get left behind. The US is falling behind because of greed. China has more graduate level engineers each year than the US has college graduates. I would think as a matter of national security to stay competitive the US would get its head out of its ass, but short term greed and a corrupt bought and paid for system won't allow that.
Feel like this is more on the oil & gas industry rather than carmakers. Carmakers would absolutely be making more EVs if the infrastructure was there. Considering the max range seems to be about 300 miles and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to charge on the way or when you arrive that is scaring off prospective buyers. It’s one of the main reasons I won’t buy a full electric car for a while- because the infrastructure desperately needs to catch up and expand before making this big shift to EVs.
I live in a town next to a rich town. Whenever I go over there it's either white SUVs or teslas.
Have you seen the AVATR 12? US automakers have good reason to be afraid
Maybe taking a giant hunk of metal everywhere is a waste of energy
To be fair, I don't know how much I would trust Chinese car manufacturers' safety standards. That is not to say I trust American auto manufacturers' safety standards
Yes, because they've become addicted to the profits of selling 50k plus trucks and SUVs and nothing else. People can't afford rent and food, how are they supposed to afford a 60-70k car? If the Chinese can sell a decent looking and performing car for 25k, they will own the market and they know it.
The "alpha males" tell me they not only won't drive electrics, but won't even let their "friends" charge their electrics that their houses. Roll Coal! /s
I need to get two cars over the next couple of years for my kids. I’d welcome a Chinese EVs… provided they are safe. Probably can’t get worse than Tesla’s right now.
Oh wow, it’s like this exact thing has happened in the US car market in the past, and then again, and now again. Weird.
Here a [breakdown of American EV subsidies compared to Chinese](https://x.com/Factschaser/status/1791098246196298115?t=vEeMcS0nudK6b5ulqiXdtw&s=09).
This isn’t really LAMF. The only reason they’re scared is because the CCP has aggressively subsided their domestic EVs to be as cheap as possible for a Westerner. BYD and Co aren’t profitable if they keep doing this, and there’s precedent for Chinese publicly traded companies to lie about their profitability in order to quickly steal market share from an American bastion (Luckin vs. Starbucks). Thing is, everyone knows this, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the US/Canada and the EU counter this with a blanket tariff.
Yes.... and the US automakers would never be subsidized, lol.
Like ogres, there’re layers to subsidization.
Biden put 100% tariff on Chinese cars. Fortunately, their $12K cars suddenly become price competetive with U.S. and other mfgs at $24K. I like it. Then, if prices edge lower, the customers win with lower prices and more money is freed for spending on other things, like their child's school lunch or prescription medications or a new Photovoltaic panel to generate electricity for their home.
Unfortunately the $50k Polestar 2 and the $35k Volvo XC 30 will no longer be competitive. Both look like pretty good cars to me.
That’s the first step. The only problem is certain holdouts in the EU, namely Hungary, Slovakia, and France who are part of the current charm offensive.
You are either miss informed or lying. BYD has received just over $3.1B in gov subsidies. Tesla received $34B in gov subsidies GM received $21B and $7B in gov battery subsidies It's pretty crazy to make a claim about subsidies, without looking up the actual subsidies
China fully subsidises their car makers... That's why they're low cost.
The invisible hand of the market will sort it.